Embossed Imagine Tag

Hello! I made the background for this tag using lots of Distress Inks. Did you know they are embossable? I can still remember the first time I saw embossing powder melting. It was early 20 years ago and it was a serious “Ah-Hah!” moment.

The focal image is a Teesha Moore stamp. It’s an unmounted rubber stamp I bought years ago on her Etsy shop. After I’d done my tag background, I inked it up with Black Soot Distress Ink.

I pressed her down and was ready to dip the tag into my embossing powder box. I keep a large Tupperware devoted to that purpose.

Ooops!

The key to embossing with ink is to make sure the only ‘wet’ thing on the surface is the part you want to emboss. Unfortunately, I hadn’t allowed that background to dry thoroughly. See how the powder is clinging to a large part of the tag? Not the plan at all. It was meant to cling only to the black stamped fly girl.

There’s an easy fix, but it takes patience and a steady hand. Just use a dry paintbrush to painstakingly brush away all the excess before heat embossing.

After I’d taken care of the problem, I continued on to emboss the word Imagine. You can be sure I was positive the rest of the tag was dry before I dipped it this time!

Here’s a link to some other projects I’ve done with embossing. I find most mistakes can be worked through. How about you? I’d love to hear your doozies in the comments below.

This tag is beautiful! I can’t stop looking at it! What are you going to do with it? This weekend I hope to try to create an embossed tag too but yes, I will probably make all of the above-mentioned mistakes! I just have to look at embossing powder and it gets all over the place!

I’ve done that so often too – I usually do a bit of dry-brush cleaning and flicking and then just embrace imperfection! There’s certainly nothing wrong with the end result here – it’s a fabulous tag. I hope you’re having a great time with your Aunt Marjie and the Mah Jong… that’ll make you both Mah Jong Marjies (that works better in my accent than yours, without the r!).
Alison x

This is wonderful! I too have done that but I think the thing I do most is either upside down or back to front – easily remedied by cutting up and mounting on a bigger surface but so annoying!! Hugs, Chrisx

Fabulous tag! I must commend you on your patience to brush away the excess ep. I don’t think I could have done it.
My most irritating mistake was realizing after I finished a mini album that I glued half of my pages in upside down. That’s a mistake I definitely learned from & thankfully haven’t repeated. *knock on wood*

I have done that SO many times ….. my favourite ‘error’ was making cards that opened on the wrong side or upside down – if I had a penny for every time – lol. Your stencilled background is beautiful and I love how the embossing makes the image ‘pop’. Anne xx

About the worst thing I’ve ever done was when I was making a mini album and realized about half the pages were upside down. Weeping and gnashing of teeth ensued. I always double check now. Love the tag!!!

I taught 5 classes on embossing last week for our local library district for their “One Kind Word” campaign. We had so many doozies that it is hard to count! My favorite was the woman who put the embossing powder on the stamp. But also included were getting the powder EVERYWHERE, scorching the paper, heating the paper so long that the powder melted into the paper, and getting everything on the Versamark pads. We did fix everything and a good time was had by all so I called it a success.